Ithikial_AU

Pretty much everyone's mods are here now: http://cmmods.greenasjade.net/

@John Kettler - Yes this scenario is 'the odd one out' against most of of the scenarios of the pack since it's the Allies on the offensive. Most others will involve them reacting to surprise German movements. After the dawn attack of the Sept 20th attack against CCA HQ was repulsed, all CCA forces turned around from their advance north and returned to the vicinity of Arracourt at speed. Lt Col Abrams conducted an offensive in the afternoon and into the night running south through Ley to Moncourt to clear the German line 'once and for all.' (Hence the scenario name of Rinaldi's). He had his full 37th Battalion and the 10th Armored Infantry to do this. It was a constant attack that lasted hours and quite rarely for the time into the darkness of night. Despite the risks, A Company of each Battalion entered Moncourt in the pitch black to dig the Germans out. It was all for nought though since the US forces pulled back soon after their success and the Germans returned to occupy the positions, the stalemate started to settle in. Working with these forces in the editor and the vast space involved it's easy to see why CCA 4th AD were constantly surprised. They simply didn't have the manpower to a continuous front line on three sides around Arrocourt and the Germans attacked from all three directions over the course of week.

Sorry a little off topic now but couldn't resist. This is probably most of us... "Dear Mrs, your son died heroically when his commander, recently returned from a full day at the office with an alcoholic beverage (or two) in hand, took command in a tired and half drunken state of mind. Despite his inheberiated state, the Commander was confident of his abilities and that he was of sound mind. He ordered your son's unit to assault the enemy's fortified position without support or covering fire saying 'My boys... they've got this.' The assault was a failure but the Commander wants to inform you that your boy was avenged with a follow up massive artillery strike and that the explosions were pretty."

I shouldn't laugh but those pixeltruppen examples... I've got tears. Well done! We honestly need a pixeltruppen rememberence day.

If you need some help. About to finish a full campaign playthrough of this urban nightmate. Just RL at the moment is delaying me finishing the final mission.

When it's done. Likely the Scenario Depot. Long way to go yet.

I think it's a case when there is need for a new/revised animation then one will be created. There's probably specific circumstances we can all think of we'd like to be animated a little better (not to mention other cosmetic/visual wishes) but does it really have an impact on gameplay? The new corner peaking mechanic with the 4.0 upgrade, would be great if the troops stacked up against the corder and twisted their bodies around to 'peak and shoot.' <- This guy is a bit biased however, and is still holding out for CMx2 to head back into mid-war territory one day so that's on the top of my list. New Theaters/Time Periods > Animations

You've got to have the same number (or more?) of the mod tagged files than the non-mod tagged files to ensure they are all used. For instance if JorgeMC's has 8 faces with the modtag of [Snow], but you have 16 regular faces without a mod tag then only half of the pxiel truppen in game will use the modded faces. To get around it you could simply duplicate copies of Jorge's faces and number accordingly to equal the number of regular faces. Make sense? I've bumped into the problem with uniform files in the past.

Just a note on the weather. If you play these scenarios in chronological order you'll probably breath a big sigh of relief when you get to this battle. You can see more than 500m in front of you. I hope you all like fog. Most of the German attacks were carried out at dawn or during particularly bad weather periods to eliminate the US aircover threat which was seen as particularly potent in this area. (The relationshp between the US Third Army and their attached air arm.... alludes me at present.... is well documented). Not the best tank weather for either side but the lesser of two evils for the Germans. Regardless the German plans had the intended effect. The weather eliminated aerical recon missions over these crucial days allowing the Germans to get the drop on the Americans virtually every time. Whenever the weather cleared enough (usually by the middle of the day) the American aircraft pounced. In game however this eliminates aircraft from the equation for most if not all of the battles.

Just when you think there isn't another topic we can find research Grogs for. It's one of my personal wishes that the use of captured enemy infantry equipment will one day be included in the game for specific situations, but I realise the use of scavenged / captured equipment isn't being modelled in CMx2 given the potential for 'gamey abuse.' However could this be considered an exception worth looking at? It's not like giving an MG42 to each allied squad.

Looking good.

If there are any modders / artists out there who can do this and want to pitch in please contact me. We've already got some modtagged uniforms for the 4th Armored Division troops / tank crews we plan to include with the package. (Pending the thumbs up from the modders themselves). One word of warning though is you'll probably have to commit to reviewing all of the buildings textures. We have a few villages and even part of the city of Luneville to map out so it's safe to say we'll be using all of the buildings at some point.

Sadly no. Personally I'm again bogged down in unexpected work straight after Christmas for a little bit. Rinaldi is by far the most advanced out of all of us however and I think is putting together a bit of a preview. The desperate defense by the Hellcats of the 704th Tank Destroyer Battalion is definitely on the list of scenarios. The September 19th main engagement that features two platoons of Hellcats and anything the Americans can muster against the advancing 40 odd Panthers in the fog is perhaps the 'big fancy' once of the pack. Not to mention a likely challenge / sheer terror for the poor tanker Pixeltruppen.

Though I'm not a big MP person this is generally the accepted rules I've come across. I don't think there is a problem with using pre-planned bomabrdments if you are assaulting a fixed position. The other caveat maybe if you are playing a scenario where you would assume the scenario designer has intended for one or both sides to have access to pre-planned artillery missions and balanced the sceanrio accordingly. Keep in mine pre-planned missions are (in my experience) always on target/effective and therefore can be incredibly powerful. A simple scenario design trick is to make all off map support become available after 5 minutes as it prevents their use during the deployment phase. A five minute delay can usually be explained quite easily or be default lead to a more accurate historical scenario, even in the case of strict historically based scenarios.

Yep that's it. Whoops.

On some points we're probably being a little bit too nuts on the historical accuracy and tweaking - like trying to sort out how many 76mm Shermans were involved (which granted is pretty important when going up against Panthers). The OOB is still not fully finalised, but it's getting close I think. Zaloga's latest on Arracourt is a good read and definately a key source for me and is easy to follow. Having lots of maps is also a great - why a whole bunch of other historians don't do this is beyond me. It's bugged me a little that the September Lorraine fighting has been ignored by many wargames over the years given it's importance given it soaked up so much German armour while other key operations like Market Garden were occuring. For instance, imagine if all these armour vehicles were instead deployed against the Allied forces in the Netherlands at this time? The demise of the 1st British Airborne could have been extended to include the two US Airborne Divisions as well, not to mention the intense pressure on XXX Corps' own armoured forces. Rinaldi and Mad Mike have also found some good primary source material which is making us question what we've already got down 'on paper' from these secondary sources. The latest to stand out is a copy of the Panzer Brigade Formation documents from 1944 showing planned tank strength and what was possible. (In German, so I may be interpretting it wrong). Looking at the numbers involved you can see why the likes of General Guderian were not in favour of Panzer Brigades given the drain they'd bring to replenishing his existing Panzer Divisions after the summer offensives. At the moment trying to finalise exact numbers of Panthers and Pazner IV's available in both PzBrig 111 and 113 as of Sept the 18th 1944. It is possible but difficult. I still have (good wargaming) nightmares of the Scottish Corridor campaign at going up against those Panthers. The mantlet tactic was widely used once the Panther exploit was discovered and it's good to see the game take that into account. One problem though is the Panzer Brigades were kitted out with the latest production run of Panthers that came off the factory floor in August, so we're talking Pz V Ausf G's in these battles. I think the mantlet flaw were resolved to some extent by then. It is difficult to program an effective AI attack plan, but there's a few things in our favour which ramps up the difficulty and gives the German AI and edge without 'cheating/moving away from history': - The weather. Most CMx2 made armour fights have been designed / replicated from historical fights that have occured on a clear summer's day. (Like you'd expect). Not finalised but I think every fight has at least Mist weather condition setting, though in many cases it will be fog/heavy fog. Not ideal tank conditions for sure but the Germans used the weather and proceeded to attack through it knowing Allied aircraft would be out of the picture. (Well... not counting 'Bazooka Charlie'). - Poor initial American placement / defences. The 4th Armored Division and General Patton himself who visited Arracourt during the battle were persistently of the opinion that the German armoured counter attack was localised and 'finished' after each day of fighting. (IRC I think a couple of Battalion level inteligive officers felt otherwise but were overrulled). They thought the German attack on Luneville on the 18th Sept was an isloated occurence. They never knew a second Pz Brigade was in front of them until it attacked on Sept the 19th. Even on the 20th after two days of heavy tank engagements all along their front, they still thought it was over and proceeded to kick off with their planned push to the north east which allowed German armour to attack CCA Headquarters/Rear areas virtually unopposed except for some engineers, headquarters staff and artillery batteries who had yet to move out. - Linked to the above, the composition of forces involved. The Germans went in with a full battalion of albiet 'Green' Panthers on September the 19th, but the Americans only had largely 75mm Shermans on hand to deal with them. The compositions are historically accurate but not 'gamey' where a player would naturally stock up on 76mm Shermans if they knew what they were up against.

Welcome back Fuser.

Just to add what's already been said, I don't think going the other way and preventing toops from firing from the back of halftracks and other vehicles while being passengers would be a valid route to take either. It's one of those little Tac AI functions that are rarely useful but still have a place on the battlefield. I've personally kept troops mounted in their halftracks while chasing down fleeing enemy infantry for example. Keep my boys mobile while there is limited threat to their safety. Having to dismount a squad, take out the enemy enemy and then remount in the hafltrack is effectively a minimum of 3 turns 'lost' in a WeGo battle. Not an ideal first option tactic in most cases but gives us commanders flexibility in the use of our forces on the battlefield.

Shameless plug. Nothing to do with Battlefront's efforts but a bunch of us are working on a bunch of scenarios surrounding the Battle of Arracourt. Safe to say V4.0 will be required and still a little while off yet.

I think Apache if talking about the one new button (and colour) across the titles rather than the whole mod. Since the game can't find a JuJu mod file for that button it will default to the standard BF made button which would look a bit out of place around JuJu's UI mod.

All in one dload packages now will save you a lot of time.

Ah, that would explain it.

Just booted up the editor in CMBN and noticed I can't mount British troops onto the back of some Shermans. Could be mistaken but wasn't 4.0 upgrade going to bring CMBN up to speed with CMFB and the other titles where tank riding is now possible. (Despite it not being the best mode of transport for poor pixeltruppen). I remember there being debates years ago on the forums about the prevalence or lack of tank riders on the Western Front, is this still part of the mindset when it comes to CMBN?

And another for a Windows bundle download. Getting invalid key whenever I try to activate.